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Forever
Everyone has some kind of life philosophy or creed that they live by. It's not quite a religion, although some like Buddhism are on the edge. You probably have your own, and it's usually related to how you perceive death or wonder what's going to happen afterwards. Some people devote their lives to their religion in order to gain access to their afterlife. Some people believe that we all become dust in the wind and the best you can do is leave a legacy, and some people will use that philosophy to wallow in hedonism. No matter how religious you are, your concern or lack thereof of death does seem to define at least to some extent, your life. What do I believe? The definition of being an agnostic is "I don't know, and I'm not going to perchance a guess." My religious beliefs are closest to atheism, since I have trouble in believing in an omnipotent god. A god who is not omnipotent is easy for me to believe in, but very few modern religions have that caveat. However, one tenant of atheism I struggle with is their common conception of death. In atheism, death is the end of the road. You lose all consciousness. This isn't like getting knocked unconscious or falling asleep. It's fairly incomprehensible to the human mind because human consciousness has no reason to ponder what it'd be like without itself. And understanding it won't do you any good when and if it comes. Some people make you think about it by saying "what was it like before you were born." The problem with that line of thinking is that it implies that people remember that exact moment they popped into consciousness, and no person on Earth does. I mean, just because I don't remember when I was two years old doesn't mean I wasn't there. Memory gets in the way of explaining it that way. The closest I've ever gotten to "experiencing" loss of conscious is during a hernia surgery. I went under anesthesia. While this happens your brain generally doesn't form memories, so when you wake up you perceive it to be immediately after you "fell asleep". The ultimate loss of consciousness is the space in between those things, without the waking up to appreciate it at the end. A lot of atheists find this comforting. I find it horrifying. I find it more horrifying than pretty much any hell that any other religion could come up with. I get that atheism is about answers, not comfort, but it surprises me with how comfortable that some of them are. I mean if there weren't a large percentage of atheists or irreligious people content with this belief, we'd probably have a lot more transhumanists trying to cure death. I mean, I've heard it romanticized that "we return to the life force" and "our atoms will rejoin the infinite universe," but they all essentially are pretty ways of saying we become fertilizer. I find it horrifying for two reasons. The first reason is one I never hear: it questions the value of the concept of life. Life is a strange and supernatural thing. There isn't anything else that remotely comes close to it in the universe. Even if it's an accident that it's here, it's a pretty bizarre accident. However, if the only purpose of life... is to make more life, and to feed that life in some way, shape or form, it is an exercise in futility. Life itself as a concept is pointless. Think of it. I give you a machine. It has no value, and it only has one purpose. It can create copies of itself. It can do nothing else. Each of those copies is exactly as the original. And imagine each of those copies are sort of gelatinous. They can't be used to build anything, and if you eat them, they'll pass right through you. The machine doesn't benefit you. It doesn't even benefit itself by having more of itself around. I need to believe that life itself has more of a purpose than to make more life. The second reason is the one that everyone always hears. Everything I do personally would be pointless (especially with my own life beliefs, that I'll get to later). Most atheists would tell me that the best we could do is leave a legacy. And I was on that train for a quite some time, but that crashed into the first train. If life's purpose was simply to reproduce (i.e. If my purpose was to have as many kids as possible), it just goes back to futility. Spreading to spread because spreading is our ultimate purpose. Adding to art or culture? If I left even the world's greatest book behind, it would only leave the people who read it a little bit happier while they were on their quest to pointlessly procreate. And happiness is only temporary. But it bothers me more intrinsically than extrinsically. If the world forgets about me already, I don't care. I've joined the 99% of humanity in the past, and the 99.99% of life in general. I don't want to forget about me. Ever. After the sun gobbles up the Earth in a massive heat death. After the universe collapses in on itself. That is one of the main reasons that the ultimate loss of consciousness (which is different than becoming unconscious) frightens me. I mentally can't accept that the self doesn't exist at some point in time. Luckily if the atheists are right, I'm never gonna need to. My world view is similar to hedonism, but it's not quite. I'd consider it a more sophisticated form of hedonism. Hedonism is "pleasure above all else." My belief is "experiences above all us." (Emphasis on the plural). New experiences especially. When I'm living up to my highest, not only am I improving my mind and body, I'm seeking new experiences like an MMO player desperately trying to get the level 88 to join that new quest that everyone is saying is awesome. And yes, there are some restrictions on experiences. Like if it harms my own health, or the health or others, I don't do it. I don't do drugs, for instance. Each new experience brings me closer to a complete person, and in a way, it lengthens my life. There's this thing called time perception. Those of you who are adults have probably noticed it. The older you get, the faster time goes. This is because when you were a child, everything was a new experience. As adults, we fall into routines. The four days that week you went into work without a hitch will all come together in your mind and form the same memory, if they even really get recorded at all. However, on that fifth day when your tire broke and you were late getting it repaired, getting your first tardy. You're going to remember that for quite awhile. In a way, it lengthened your life in hindsight. People tell me all the time that there's stuff they want to do, and this thing or that thing holds them back. They wonder how I do it. How do I get off of my ass and start making YouTube videos, or start making a cartoon, or write a book and try to get it published. Well, there's the fear of a routine shortening my life, the existential panic of never having the opportunity to do it, and the spiritual desire to expand my horizons. It's a core tenement to my belief: I have not yet seen my favorite movie of all time. I have not yet heard the best song ever recorded. I have not lived through the defining moment of my life yet. Last month, it was actually get my novel done. Actually seriously head for publication. This month? Take up archery, donate blood. Who knows what else. Things I haven't done before. If I like doing them, do them again. Eventually I'll move to New Zealand, and that'll give me a whole host of new experiences. Why that country? Maybe I want to make a fantasy movie trilogy on some famous books. Okay, that's a joke. But would it surprise you if I was being serious? That's how much I dedicate myself to this idea. I have my reasons for that country in particular, largely political, and largely no one's business. Wouldn't my death be even more pointless in the atheist mindset in that regard? Not really. Pointless is an absolute. You can't be more or less pointless than another pointless thing. All pointless things are equally pointless. And that my friends is math. I mean, even with a semi-minor league YouTube channel, I do affect people. I affect people more than most. Not in a major way, but the effect is there. And I'd like to provide positive experiences for other people. I mean more shared experiences in general helps this whole humanity thing get a little bit further. That's another thing. Doing this, seeking experience, it helps with empathy. Empathy is another supernatural thing. It's biological function is more or less to allow you to want what someone else wants. This has allowed us to defeat predators, build civilizations, and elevate the standard of living for us all. It gives us reason to. Some people, religious or not, fear the concept of forever. That immortality is a kind of hell in itself. Assuming you don't get imprisoned forever or get your limbs chopped off, it would get boring eventually. This is not true. 20 years ago, we didn't have the internet, whose effects on the world are still not fully realized. It's probably only second to the printing press in invention when it comes to changing the world. 40 years ago, video games didn't exist. One of the biggest mediums in the world. 60 years, television. 300 years ago, one of the biggest superpowers in the world wasn't even a country yet. Experience dictates that the future only becomes more exciting than the past, and the world changes now faster than it ever has in the past. Most fantasy about immortality shows how terrible it is. I feel that this is because forever is another concept that the mind can't fully grasp. Nothing stays the same, except when they do. I didn't fully grasp the concept of forever until one day when my glasses needed to be repaired and I saw the world blurry again for the first time in awhile. I thought to myself that this is what my default view will be like for the rest of my life. Less than it once was. Yes, my glasses caused an existential crisis. And that's just it. Forever is like life. It's a strange anomaly in the universe filled with both good and bad. It takes thousands of years of science and millions of dedication to truly understand it and all of its implications. The strange part is, that if what certain atheists have told me, that if death really is the end, the only way that any life could get any purpose is to end death. I mean, overpopulation might be a problem, until we can trick a CEO into thinking that there's oil on Mars. I don't think anyone is denying it, if NASA was looking for oil instead of other forms of life, then we'd have a colony on another planet by now. That's how special life is, in spite of it possibly being the most futile, self-defeating thing in the universe. Do I seek immortality? I think we all do, in a way. I mean, those that don't, the nihilists, and the hedonists, aren't considered very healthy. Like I said, even most atheists want to leave behind some kind of legacy, or benefit humanity in some way, or just have a family in search for their forms of immortality. And like I said, I can't comprehend someone feeling comfortable with the end of the self. If you don't in some way care about yourself, you generally aren't considered healthy. The more astute of you may have noticed a paradox. What's the difference between one being of life being alive forever and the entirety of life being forever? Aren't they both equally futile? That would be removing experience from the equation. No one experience can transcend all life, beyond Armageddon. Even death itself is not the same experience for every being. I feel that experience is an interesting thing. As a writer, I'm supposed to hate forms of the verb "to be." Like is/are/were. When all something does is "is". When a creature does nothing but "ises" all day, taking a break from "ising" yesterday it's boring. Experiencing life makes life seem less futile. Learning something new, visiting a new location, to me, they all give it some purpose that I can't adequately describe. I know this, because the days when I'm "ising" are the most globby days of my life as they just fuse together. Follow a routine for a week, and I'll never remember most of that week for as long as I live. And that's something that forever won't fix. It goes to reason that I'm still figuring this stuff out. I'm 23 years old. I have a lot of time. Hopefully forever. In this world or the next. In the meantime, I'm going to make sure that I have the most in depth and exciting experiences I can. Even if they're gone forever when I am. Category:Miscellaneous